Not all people of faith are theists, and no argument based in a “probably” carries any real weight. There don’t have to be binary definitions, but I’ve dealt plenty of times, here on CD (@Emphyrio), with people who declare that all religion is evil. That’s the broad brush that I will not hear, especially after today.

It is not original with me. I read that somewhere and I thought it made some sense. These are two groups looking for a fight with each other. They train for these fights. The anti-fascists are a major obstacle to dealing with these right wing hate groups. Whenever they show up there is violence and the right-wingers get a tremendous amount of publicity. The media of course covers this type of violence. If they stopped confronting the right wingers with violence people would hardly pay attention to their vulgar rants. You would have to go to something like the Southern Poverty Law Center website to follow what these right wingers are up to.

djt also spread the condemnation to “many sides.” Just who was it who died? Which side are the 5 still in hospital, one critical, from? Who was it who came taking advantage of VA’s open carry law? Yes, I saw some “antifascists” going too far, but I didn’t see anyone on that side of the divide armed.

I don’t think the anti-fascists would ever do something like drive a car into anybody. They break windows and start fires and fight and spray people with pepper spray but they don’t intentionally kill people as far I know. They have the suspected driver in custody so I think the best thing is to wait for more information. Right wing hate groups or individuals who support these groups have a reputation for killing people. If Trump doesn’t make a stronger statement against this sort thing maybe he will lose some support among Republicans in Congress. Those people in Congress never seem to draw the line. Perhaps they will on this. Or, maybe that is expecting too much.

At the very least, I’d think the right to protest, assembly, must disappear once violence and harassment actually break out during the permitted protest.

And that did happen today; it was declared not a peaceful assembly and shut down. What might have worked even better would be a large number of arrests of the tiki-torchers last night, who marched without a permit (and I don’t know what fire laws have to say about those torches) in a clear threat against a peaceful private assembly inside the church.

The vehicular incident was after the protest was broken up, and I haven’t yet heard how intentional it was. There were 3 cars involved, and the one that seems most at fault was at the rear. But to hit hard enough to propel 2 other cars into a crowd with enough force to kill at least one (I saw the crushed rear of the middle car) decidedly implies intent.

According to the founder of ‘Fascism’, (former editor of the Italian Socialist Party’s newspaper) ‘Avanti’, Benito Mussolini, ‘Fascism’ was an “evolution of Socialism” and a “third way” between communism and capitalism. It was of course also totalitarian in its aims as was for example ‘Stalinism’ and ‘Maoism’ albeit with more complete control of the economy.

The ‘fascists’ in Germany (the National Socialist German Workers Party) had these ideas about the economy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichswerke_Hermann. (For the nearest anything like that happening in America, do a search for “Truman steel industry”. )

“the power of big business and their collusion with government” is what America has had from the beginning. That’s what
has to be understood instead of continually dredging up Mussolini’s failed ‘evolution of socialism’ from nearly a century ago.

At the very least, I’d think the right to protest, assembly, must disappear once violence and harassment actually break out during the permitted protest.

This statement immediately brought to mind the old “black block,” the supposed anarchists who would conveniently show up at anti-globalization protests and start smashing windows, thus giving the militarized police goon squads the green light to go in and shut things down, attacking and arresting protesters indiscriminately.

Well, that theory of yours falls apart when you consider who the " black block " blew up. Starbucks, Mickey Ds, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, et al. Very few small business or Mom & Pop operations, right? Just askin’.
It could be coincidental or another String Cheese Incident.

Worldwide, this is definitely the case. In fact, the number of people in godless religions greatly outnumbers the godless who have no religion. But in the U.S., the number who practice godless faiths is dwarfed by the overwhelming majority who are theists, and the majority of the godless belong to no faith.

“and no argument based in a “probably” carries any real weight.”

It’s a great deal more probable that the overwhelming majority on both sides were theists than the comparatively tiny likelihood that atheists predominated on either side. Atheism was not a relevant factor here.

“There don’t have to be binary definitions, but I’ve dealt plenty of times, here on CD (@Emphyrio), with people who declare that all religion is evil.”

There are similarly plenty of theists who declare atheism, and even all atheists, evil. I was called some variant of evil hundreds of times back when I was a campaigner on alt.atheism. It happens.

“That’s the broad brush that I will not hear, especially after today.”

The violent clash here was overwhelmingly between theists, but I think the issue of faith was mostly an irrelevancy on both sides.